POPSUGAR Celebrity

The Most Scientifically Accurate Movie? You'll Never Guess

Mar 5 2014 - 4:37am

Oscar-winning film Gravity [1] has many wondering what science is depicted accurately in the film and what's pure fiction [2]. So former astronaut Chris Hadfield [3] stopped by Conan to debunk some space myths with extremely (not) true facts.

He's kidding, of course. You won't find Looney Tunes characters or Michael Jordan [4] in space — but you will find astronauts ejecting their dirty underwear into the atmosphere. In a sit-down with Conan, Chris explains how the spacefarers do laundry (they don't).

Laundry takes up a lot of water, which is hard to come by in space. The International Space Station crew will wear out their clothes, then stuff the dirty laundry into an unmanned waste pod, which is then pushed away from the ISS and incinerated as it makes its way down into the atmosphere. So there's basically lots of dirty underwear raining down on us.